Rev. Laurence Tracy, who grew up in northeast Rochester and stayed there his entire life as an advocate for the local Puerto Rican community, died Thursday at age 78.

Known affectionately as "Padre Tracy," he spent more than 50 years in the Roman Catholic priesthood, including at St. Michael's where he attended grammar school. He co-founded the Ibero-American Action League in 1968, and the organization recently honored him by naming its main building on East Main Street the Laurence Tracy Administration Building.

Rev. Tracy had been in hospice care with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Calling hours will be from 2 to 7 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at St. Michael's Church, 859 N. Clinton Ave. His funeral will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the church, with interment at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

"I am devastated," Ibero President Hilda Rosario Escher said. "He fought for our rights all his life. He considered himself Puerto Rican."

"I can't get the words out to describe him; he was just a beautiful human being," said Ana Casserly, an advocate for Latino children in the Rochester City School District. "It was just a blessing to have him in the community. ... It was a gift, and I wish we could have him again."

Rev. Tracy, who sometimes joked that he spoke español irlandés, or "Irish Spanish," was born three days before St. Patrick's Day in 1940, the oldest of six children in an Irish-German family. He attended Catholic schools then entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1966.

He decided early on that he would be a pastor for the people. While his seminary classmates took up golf and traveled to famous churches in Europe, he spent his time working in settlement houses and driving a truck for a potato chip factory.

Shortly after his ordination, he was sent to Puerto Rico for six weeks to improve his Spanish. His return flight landed at 10 p.m. and was greeted by about 100 people from his parish, Mount Carmel Church. They were waiting to hear him speak.

"I told them, 'You all know I learned to speak Spanish, so, el sabor lo dice todo,'" he recalled in 1980. "I had done some beer drinking in Puerto Rico and that was the famous advertising slogan of Corona beer — 'the flavor tells it all.' And the crowd went wild."

Buy Photo

Laurence Tracy and musician Eladio Vargas in 1980.(Photo: File photo)

He quickly dove into the social action work of the era, attending the first meeting of FIGHT and learning from Saul Alinsky, the radical organizer. Tracy described himself then as Marxist-Leninist and weighed in on all manner of injustice as it affected his neighbors.

"I found out it's not enough to hand out loaves of bread and hold hands," he said in 1980. "We needed to help the poor by studying the system, developing strategies."

He believed the city and the Diocese of Rochester should be doing more direct outreach work and did not spare them in his criticism; as a result he was effectively put on leave in 1980 after 14 years at Mount Carmel.

While out of a job, he declined offers of housing in several rectories and moved into a small studio apartment off North Clinton Avenue and tacked a sign above the door: "Padre Tracy vive aqui arriba — entre con confianza."

"Father Tracy lives upstairs — enter with confidence."

Laurence Tracy(Photo: Provided photo)

His neighbors provided him with furniture and meals until he was finally reassigned as associate director of the diocesan Division of Social Ministries for Hispanic Affairs, a position created especially for him.

"He tried to walk in the steps of Jesus Christ — I’ve seen him walk hand-in-hand with people who are oppressed and felt defeated by their situation in life," said Relton Roland, a longtime associate and friend. "He was a man; he didn’t have any supernatural powers. But he did things that other people didn’t do, or didn’t care to do, in this city."

Rev. Tracy later served at St. Andrew's, St. Michael's and Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, all of which are located in northeast Rochester. He stepped down in 2011 but had been no less active in the community; even in the last two years, slowed by age and illness, he was still a reliable presence at events and protests.

Fr. Laurence Tracy surrounded by community leaders from Rochester's Latino community in 2018.

Honors poured in during his later years. In June the city of Rochester declared a day in his honor. Both Ibero and the Puerto Rican Parade named awards after him, and a neighborhood health center on North Clinton Avenue was named for him recently as well.

"If any man deserved sainthood, it was Father Tracy," Mayor Lovely Warren said in a statement. "He was a man of integrity, wisdom, love, but most of all, faith. He truly embodied and lived God's Word."

As Casserly said: "He’s an angel from heaven sent to us, and he’s gone."